Tag Archives: Healthy Scones

Calling all lovers of the humble scone! These brown oatmeal scones are just the thing you need to accompany your cup of tea, or even for a quick breakfast. During my few years living in Dublin I have become well acquainted with the Avoca scones. They are amazing. They come with jam, butter and cream (enough said). While I initially was all about their berry scones, I am now quite obsessed with the brown scones they make. I found the recipe online and decided to give them a go but substitute some of the flour for oats. The result was pretty amazing, they are really nice and wholesome. The outside is all biscuity and crunchy/crispy and the inside is all soft and wholesome. They take hardly any time at all to make, you feel like you’re eating something relatively healthy… Unless you load on the butter and raspberry jam like I do.

I think adding some nuts, seeds and dried fruit would be really nice too, but I thought if I added them in to these they would be a little too similar to my Fruity Seeded Spelt Scones. These are definitely worth giving a go, and adding to your baking repertoire. Now go forth and bake!

Pour the flour, oats and salt in a bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Running your hands under cold water for a minute first helps prevent the butter from melting.

Mix a well in the centre of the bowl and add in the yoghurt of bicarbonate of soda. Leave to react for a couple of minutes and then add 75ml of the milk and mix well. You may need more or less milk, you just want it to come together. (I used all 150ml milk)

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and pat down until it’s about 2 1/2 cm thick. Cut out into scones with a scones cutter or an upside down glass and transfer onto a buttered baking tray.

Brush with the beaten egg and sprinkle the seeds on top. Pop into an oven preheated to 180C for 15-20 minutes (they took me 16 minutes). Enjoy hot from the oven with butter and jam. When cooled, store in a sealed container. They’re best eaten the day they’re made, but gorgeous a day or two after toasted and buttered.

Since last weekend in Tipperary I have had scones on the brain. Every morning when we got up, our gracious host in our B&B had fresh brown soda bread and fresh scones waiting for us. They would set us up nicely before our morning walks around Tipperary, especially one particularly mucky morning in Lisvarrinane (Which called in Irish, Lios Fearnain, means fort of the fairies)! An apt name for a mucky, impassible and wild walk! Scones are one of those easy, comforting things that everybody loves. There is nothing better than a scone hot from the oven with butter melting into it, heaped with a dollop of home made jam and a dollop of fresh cream, or creme fraiche if like me you prefer a bit of a tang.

I had already discovered the perfect white scone recipe with blueberries and almonds which I put up on the blog last summer, however I wanted to make a spelt version that was a bit more wholesome and healthy! I found this recipe on Teresa Cutter’s blog and it was delicious, so soft on the inside and crumbly on the outside. I put some chopped prunes, apricots, raisins and mixed seeds in mine.

I love mine with either a homemade blackberry jam or apricot compote. As apricots are everywhere at the moment I made a compote by throwing two punnets of sliced apricots in a pot with one cup of water and two tablespoons of sugar, stirring until soft. These got the seal of approval, and were delicious warm with butter, compote and creme fraiche! If you try one thing this weekend, let it be these little beauties!

3. Mix together the milk, vanilla and honey and mix it into the dough and work it together lightly until it combines. Don’t worry that it isn’t a wet mix, its a bit solid but it cooks perfectly. You may need a little bit more milk when mixing together to make it bind.

4. Spinkle some oats on a work surface, lay the dough on top and cut out the scones from the dough with the top of a pint glass. Let it be around an inch high.

5. Pop in an oven preheated at 200C to 220C. Bake for around 20-25 minutes, or if you have an oven like mine that has seen better days it could take about 30 minutes. They’re done when they’re golden brown all over.

6. Enjoy them warm with butter, jam and cream! They are best eaten hot from the oven, but it’s best to give them a few minutes before slicing open with a very sharp knife to avoid them falling apart.